Watching one of the colonies hard at work today in our garden, it struck
me that the pattern of flight take off and landing was very structured.
Virtually all take-offs were from the vertical front face of the hive.
The bees appeared, upside down from the upper edge of the hive
entrance,(I guess a convenient point of exit if you've just descended
from a frame), walked 1 or 2 cm. (3/8" to 3/4") up the outside of the
front, vertical hive face and took off ,head uppermost at about 45Deg
upwards.
Virtually all pollen laden homecomers came in and  landed on the
horizontal lower edge (floor edge) of the entrance (a few preferred
landing on the vertical face, again head uppermost before turning and
walking in, again upside down under the upper edge of the entrance).
This system of vertical face take-offs and horizontal landings worked
very well since it seemed to avoid all air near misses between outgoing
and incoming traffic.
It did make me wonder if there is any point in having a projecting
landing board, since the bees seem completely oblivious to the normal
beekeeper concepts of "right way up" or "horizontal faces better than
vertical"
Are horizontal landing boards just a foible of beekeepers and beehive
designers?

Alan Riach
Edinburgh-Scotland